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Topic: [SP/CAMP] Black Lands (Arma 3) (Read 2330 times)

That part with the UAZ is not so obvious even though at first it seems so. The dead soldier is a "dead end", but it's explained later. You would have to follow the footprints and look around where they "show to" (towards the forest). There's a small hut in that forest...

I think I'll give the player a LITTLE bit more of a hint on that but all in all I don't want to give away this side-story too easily. I loved these hidden intel and spots in the Arma 2 campaign - you had to look around a lot and think and search. Often you'd never find them but when they were (emotionally) extremely rewarding (not necessarily in a materialistic way).The reward of this side-story is not something that you need at all costs, but if you find it you will have something useful (in this case: information).

Thanks for the idea with the cutscenes in the conversation with Kamil. I'll implement cinema stripes which take the control of the player.

I actually did follow the footprints into the forest but I couldn't see a hut. Perhaps if you had the footprints going a bit further. When I next play the mission I'll give it a better look.

But anyway, so moving onto....

Martin's List

I have to say this mission really got the blood flowing; very enjoyable experience and well thought out. Quite challenging as well and it really offers a great deal. One minute you're riding a bus and next minute you're dodging helicopter fire in a motorboat Also once again we get to see some amazing camerawork and storytelling...the flashback scenes were brilliantly done.

To be honest there really isn't much to comment on because it is really good. Definately an evening well spent. However....

There are a few things that I think could do with tweaking. Most of them quality of life changes with only one minor bug.

The first thing I will mention and I'm pretty sure that this will not change and that's your teammates not having weapons at the start. And by start I mean when you're clear of Novy Sobor. Unfortunately the first engagement was a bit of a mess for me. I parked the vehicle about 400m away from the camp not far from the Prud lake, and I left my guys there because they were unarmed and of no use to me.

I dealt with the enemies at the camp and told my guys to come to me. That was a mistake because a UAZ with reinforcements arrived and it was a miracle that they didn't kill any of my guys because they were in the open. I was able to deal with the reinforcements and give my guys weapons etc.

Before we go any further though, I should mention the bug. Basically the setcaptive you have in place is being removed too late. I could see troops at the camp as friendly when they should be enemy. Best time to remove it I think is when the 'stay undetected' objective completes.

Anyway, so I spent a lot of time trying to give my troops the right loadouts. Too much time as a matter of fact. When I went to the convoy marker I saw the convoy was already there, and a brief engagement resulted in all of us being catapulted by T72 fire. That pretty much ruled out any possibility of using my troops; they're not intelligent enough to employ hit and run tactics and for me micromanaging them would be a nightmare. So when I reloaded I just left my guys at the camp, grabbed an RPG launcher and went alone.

I destroyed the trucks easily enough and we all went the lake. If I'm being totally honest I think your teammates are pretty redundant here. I ended up doing the entire mission solo because it was easier. I didn't need extra firepower because we're guerillas and we're not supposed to get into stand-up fights. Also I generally do missions as solo and I've never been a massive fan of AI groups.

I'm not suggesting removing your teammates because someone will find them useful, but I didn't. But at least you know the mission can be done solo. If I had known I was gonna be doing the mission solo from the start I probably would have reached the convoy location a lot sooner and had time to lay a trap. Also for some reason I couldn't take mines out of the crate. I had bag space so I can't understand why it wouldn't let me...unless you've got to be a specific unit type.

So yeah, to sum up, team can be a real liability....which I've found in many missions not just yours.

So moving onto the second part...

I did find this one pretty cool and it works well. Great for people like me who do prefer stealth, and I really liked the radio conversation and flashback. Very well done indeed. I have just one gripe about this mission, and that's the radio chatter between me and Kamil.

I have to admit, the constant 'foot mobiles at 12 oclock' really annoyed me and it was an immersion breaker. Because I was doing this mission solo (who'd have guessed), the radio chat was unnecessary and it was hard to concentrate because it was literally all the time. With it being a stealth mission, I reckon a good ol' fashioned 'enableradio false' would work wonders here.

Apart from that, all in all very fun indeed. Actually can't wait for the next one

Hope this is useful

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Some of the most memorable missions made involve the player doing very little...

"But one thing I can tell you from not just OFP but life in general: criticism is directly proportional to quality. The more criticism a mission receives, the better the outcome" - macguba

I did notice that hint and I was using the teamswitch feature, but it still took a while to give them the decent loadouts...not to mention that I had to move them out of the camp individually because their pathfinding sucked and they got stuck on the netting

Logged

Some of the most memorable missions made involve the player doing very little...

"But one thing I can tell you from not just OFP but life in general: criticism is directly proportional to quality. The more criticism a mission receives, the better the outcome" - macguba

So, I had the opportunity to actually finish the campaign today, so now I can give a review on the last two missions and finally on the campaign as a whole. This will probably be a wall of text so you have been warned

Inner Abscess

Straight off the bat this is very atmospheric and the fog was a very nice touch. To be honest there isn't that much to say on this one because it functions well and has everything a good mission needs. The briefing has a little mistake: needs to be 'sooner or later' not 'earlier or later'.

One little detail that I liked was the T72 wreck on the way to the first question-mark as it were. I actually thought it was a real T72 Good thing it wasn't we didn't have any RPGs.

I suppose the dialogue could perhaps be put in a cutscene for the same reason as the last mission. I could literally run around and do anything mid-conversation and it's a bit of an immersion breaker. The only thing to mention is whether it's possible to disable the radio chatter when your group members join the woman or Volja.

That pretty much covers that mission; short and sweet and functions well.

Moving onto....

Alexej Pribotow

So this is the last mission and it's very difficult to express how I feel about this one if I'm being honest. It is a fun mission and a decent conclusion to the story, but on reflection I'm wondering whether it could have had more action to it.

This mission is the conclusion to the story (for now) and everything has been building up to it presumably, so I was expecting something bigger, to really finish the Pribotow story arch. I like what you've done with it, but I suppose if you want my input on story I think you need to have the following element to be more of a chasing element that goes across the whole of Chernarus. At this point in time the Russians are not important; they are secondary to revenge on this guy. All that matters is getting even with Alexej. This is a golden opportunity and nothing is as important as this. At least that was how I saw it.

This Alexei Pribotow is a pretty pivotal character; we've heard so much about him. Really he is the main antagonist of this part of the story...probably more important than the Russians at this point because it's more personal. So I think the conclusion needs to be more befitting how important he is. What we have right now is a little bit underwhelming if I'm being totally honest. Maybe I just was expecting more.

So going back to what I said before, I think it would be cool if you and your guys were discovered by Alexej in the town and then it's an all-out cat and mouse chase with the Russians in pursuit as well. Maybe if the capturing of Alexej was more elaborate somehow. Maybe even putting the player in direct control of the different characters (similar to that ArmA 1 mission) and then giving each character a different objective to complete.

I know it sounds quite Hollywood-esque but I feel that's what's needed here. I know all this involves reworking the mission and I'd understand if you don't want story input.

Technically there's only one issue that can prevent the mission from ending and that's one of your guys getting stuck on a table in Alexej's house. I can't teamswitch into them to fix it so the mission kinda stops at that point. Unless you know about it beforehand in which case you can just keep your two guys on the outskirts of the camp and then they won't get stuck. Maybe putting Alexej in another house or maybe a tent would fix the problem.

The end cutscene was great and it sets up nicely for a continuation of the story.

Campaign Review

This is actually the first campaign I've reviewed...well the first custom made campaign I've reviewed I should say. All in all it was a good gameplay experience and the cinema was expertly done and there weren't really many technical issues. The atmosphere was super as was the music choice. Every mission tied in well to each other and I liked how every character was relevant.

I think this campaign has delivered everything that one would come to expect from a Resistance campaign. I think it's impossible to not make comparisons to the OFP campaign so I'll go ahead and say that in my opinion you've delivered something that was as good if not better. I think you did right what that campaign did wrong, if that makes sense. You captured the feeling of oppression and struggle and I think you succeeded in making the audience care about the characters and about the story. That to me is an absolute necessity when it comes to story telling.

Anyway, I'll leave it here and probably save it for the actual review (if you want one of course)

I'll be more than happy to play it again to test new stuff out. Was a cool experience and well worth the time spent

Logged

Some of the most memorable missions made involve the player doing very little...

"But one thing I can tell you from not just OFP but life in general: criticism is directly proportional to quality. The more criticism a mission receives, the better the outcome" - macguba

Gruntage, I can only say thanks a million for your good feedback and your time!

Wow, your ideas for the Pribotow missions are great. If I had the other missions finished already I'd expand that one right away. Especially the thought with the guys having to accomplish different tasks got my brain started working and I had to brake it down a bit.

Your and Clayman's feedback (BIF) got me busy with these first 8 missions for days (that's a compliment! ) - now I finally have to move on to the next ones. There are still some heavy plot twists to experience for the player, but for me still a lot of work to do.

I'd appreciate it if you'd test the next ones as well. I'm planning to release missions 9-13 next, but I think this will take some weeks.

I am totally awed by the quality of the intro - it's long, the camera angles are perfect, the text is slow enough to read, the musical pieces are artful as well - hardly be able to improve this (as voiceacting would be at odds with the music).

Alrighty, so let's dive into this one again. I don't have a lot of time today so I may only get one mission done. When I have more time I'll give the campain a playthrough from the start to see what's changed. For now though, it's onto...

Petrovka Strike (Preparations) & Petrovka Strike

I'll be writing this as I do the mission so that I don't end up forgetting anything. First thing I noticed though and I'm not sure if anything can be done about this, but it seems that the title box on the loading screen isn't large enough to accomodate 'Preparations'. Maybe shorten it to 'Prep'? It's a minor point but it's the first thing I noticed.

As always the briefing is first rate and gives me everything I need to know.

Ok so now onto the mission itself. Maybe I'm missing something but doesn't Kamil need a backpack of sorts? I gave Tomas an rpg launcher and few satchels, but I couldn't equip Kamil with anything. Instead I gave him the gun bag of the nearby DshKm and I gave Tomek the tripod. Again with Tomek I was faced with the same issue. I wanted to give take more mines etc but couldn't. So I'll have to make do with what I have. Unless there is some clever way of giving each person specific items in order to maximise the amount you can take.

I'd personally just give each a guy a backpack for the sake of ease.

But anyway. So we've moved to the convoy ambush site, and I personally think that showing the briefing again is unnecessary. I literally read it 3 minutes ago I don't know if you can disable it when you move from one mission to the next. Actually just a thought, do you really need to have 2 separate missions for this? Is there any reason why you need to have the preparation in a different mission? I'd have thought that just skipping time and teleporting the player and his team would have been enough. Whether you have them together or separate doesn't really matter and doesn't really impact gameplay, but I'd at least ditch the second briefing if you do have them as they are now.

Taking out the convoy was surprisingly smooth and without any issues. Really didn't have much time to plan though. Pretty much had to attack from where we were. So after that we met up with the pilot. Now, I'm writing this as I'm playing it as I said. Just one thing that is confusing me a little and I'm not sure if it was said in the briefing. Why do we need to equip Tomek if he's leaving the group early in the mission? I gave that guy the tripod for the DshKm and now of course he's left with it, meaning I can't use the DshKm now.

Just reading the briefing again and it does say that he'll meet us at the castle later. But still, it seems rather redundant to give him stuff if you're gonna lose it pretty early in the mission. The convoy wasn't hard to beat so I'm just not sure why we needed to give him anything. I'd even go so far as to ask why have Tomek in this stage of the mission at all? Does the convoy really require 3 people as opposed to 2? He just seems a bit unnecessary that's all. At least from my perspective. Not sure if the convoy is harder to beat on some playthroughs because of randomness.

But anyway. I have to say the camera work is top notch and the suspense is great. I was hoping there'd be a mission like this. I took out the guy with one shot to the head and proceeded to sprint to the castle. I thought that the run the castle would be uneventful. But, the plot thickens it seems. Not sure how I'm gonna be able to take out any infantry and mid range with a long range sniper rifle but I'll give it a try

One thing that I thought is very weird and I'm not sure if this is intended. But I can still teamswitch to Tomek! Was this supposed to happen? What happens to Tomas and Kamil if I teamswitch? Either way I'm gonna find out.

Anyway I cleared the town as Tomek. Not sure if this was supposed to happen but I did it anyway. After doing so I switched back to Tomas and then got told to Meet Nemec. Despite finding Tomek where I left him, he wouldn't join my group (not sure if he's supposed to or if there's supposed to be some dialogue at least). Anyway, time go meet Nemec.

So I met Nemec, gathered the team and got them rearmed and took the base without too much trouble. I did however have to turn the terrain detail down to low just to be able to see the enemy. Of course the enemy can see through the grass. Not exactly fair but there you go.

Unfortunately though I lost all my new guys on the way to the truck; got caught by a patrol and my team was too spread out. You tell them to return to formation but sadly they are not very good at following this order. Oh well, they got their revenge at least. When I got to the truck however a Russian soldier appeared and shot me. Not sure if that was intended but it was a very good ambush. Shortlived however because I can reload and kill him

Anyway, so myself and Kamil finished off the guys in the hideout and the mission finished.

So what do I think. Well, it feels like the mission can do with being shorter honestly. I think there was a little too much running for my liking and it felt a bit repetitive. You kill the officer, run the village, then run to the shed, then run to the guys in the forest, then run to the base, then run to the truck....You get the picture.

It plays well and the atmosphere is great. There aren't any bugs that I can tell. Though I get the impression that team switching to Tomek in the village is not intended. Aside from that, it's pretty good. Long mission though, took me about 3 hours.

That's about as much as I can play today though. Will carry on when time permits. Probably Tuesday.

Hope this helps

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Some of the most memorable missions made involve the player doing very little...

"But one thing I can tell you from not just OFP but life in general: criticism is directly proportional to quality. The more criticism a mission receives, the better the outcome" - macguba

Yes, I also think that the mission is very long. It was long already in A2 but in A3 the characters even run slower. Still didn't have a good idea how to shorten it. Maybe cut it in half after Grishino and before Nemec calls? But then, what sense would it make? It would be only a cut, maybe with a new briefing that summarizes the mission... But it would be kind of redundant IMO.Another way would be to skip a part of the walking, e.g. from the colonel to Grishino (fade out, position T and K a bit further, fade in). But especially that part is quite suspenseful and skipping some meters - I don't know...If you have good idea it would be great.

Switching to Tomek isn't intended at all btw. and I will fix this. I want the player to feel Tomek's fear and helplessness so that he steps on the gas so to speak, but he has to move on slowly nevertheless because of the patrols.

Good point with Tomek at the beginning too. I think I will add another armored vehicle as truck protection so that the whole team is needed.

I'll give Kamil a proper backpack and will check out your suggestion for the briefing. I'm not sure but it could be that it's not needed a second time.